New copyright legislation is always a big deal. Not only does it stand to impact most of our daily lives, whether we’re loading music to listen to on the bus or trying to read a new ebook , but it is also an industry game-changer. For book publishing, a “copyright industry” that’s also trying to bridge the gap between print and digital, the current Copyright Act (unchanged since 1997) is sometimes like the little brother on crutches who can’t keep up when all we want to do is run towards the ice-cream truck (play along with me and imagine that the ice-cream truck is the exciting world of digital distribution).
Confluence As a Web-Based Publishing System
In conferences and sessions we often discuss XML based publishing workflows…a concept I love, but I term I hate. Concept — content that is single sourced, marked up and is used to drive a plethora of end uses (i.e. pbook, ebook, web content, app, etc…). Why do I hate it? It is scary, maybe not to everyone, but to enough people in the “content business” that the term itself can often kill any hope of implementation.
Here’s why we need solutions that take the scary out of XML publishing workflows.
One Book, One Twitter: Voting Starts Monday!
“What if everyone on Twitter read the same book at the same time and we formed one massive, international book club?”—Jeff Howe in One Book, One Twitter … aka #1b1t
That’s the concept behind One Book, One Twitter (#1b1t ), and I think it’s pretty awesome.
One Book, One Twitter is the brainchild of Jeff Howe (@crowdsourcing ), and here’s how it works
ISTC: A Duffer’s Perspective
I had the good fortune to attend BISG’s meeting on Tuesday “Focus on ISTC” which was a supplement to Michael Holdsworth’s recent paper:
The International Standard Text Code (ISTC): A Work in Progress / A Supply Chain Perspective
The short message for Canadian publishers and data suppliers is that the US and UK supply chain is taking the ISTC seriously and that Canadian publishers should be familiarizing themselves with it too. You might need to be using it soon.
Google Book Settlement: Possible Paths Forward
The Agency Model: What Does It Mean for Publishers, Retailers, and Readers?
E-Book Pricing Impact on Print Formats?
Noah Genner 2009 in Review: Breathe
As many have already stated 2009 was a year full of change and innovation in the book authoring, publishing and retailing world. Digital was/is the agent of change…eBooks, eReaders (of all kinds), digital workflows and networks (be they social or internet)…for the industry in 2009. It really seemed that many digital areas that had been bubbling under for the last while came to a head in 2009…all at once.
Google Has Yet to Convince Me to Give Up My iPhone
For the most hyped device release this side of the mythical Apple Tablet, the birth of the Nexus One has left me uninspired. I tried to get hyped: before 9:00 am this morning, I’d already heard/read about the potential game-changing mobile device from three separate media outlets. Of course, two of those stories were delivered via my iPhone…which seems to undercut the Nexus One’s very raison d’etre.
